“One prayer in my Masjid is a thousand times more excellent than a prayer in any other Masjid, except Al-Masjid Al-Haram and a prayer in Al-Masjid Al-Haram is better than a hundred thousand Salahs elsewhere.”

- Prophet Muhammad SAW

Three weeks ago, my family and I crossed the Qatar border to the Saudi Arabia border in 25 minutes by car. After all the 3 hours hectic fuss in the Saudi custom office, my dad drove us on a 15 hours road trip to Mecca for Umrah. Arriving at around 8 pm in the Thaif, we stayed in a motel for a night before actually going to Mecca. The next day, we went to the closest mosque to the hotel to get ready for Umrah and drove to Mecca for about an hour. We performed out Umrah a few after checking in our hotel where we got rooms facing the Masjid Al-Haram. Beautiful!

We stayed in Mecca for 3 days, just going around and prayed in the mosque every prayer times. It was very peaceful to be away from the mundanes. Ahh!

After the three days, we set off another road trip to Madinah which was slightly less than Doha to Mecca, around 9 hours. We stayed two nights in Madinah and back to Doha.

Glorious trip.

King Abdullah Sports City

Walking around Mecca doing what any sensible pilgrims would do: shopping

The mosque at night

This is my friend Dinda who also lives in Qatar and took a road trip with her family

On the way to Madina

Dropped by IKEA in Riyadh while going back to Doha

1. Regional round: which takes place in many different countries; for example, the Middle East round was held in Dubai then the South East Asia round had in several different places such as Jakarta, KL, Singapore, etc.
2. Global round: All qualified teams in the regional rounds will fly to wherever the Global Round would be!

I am proud to say that I have participated in the Dubai round of this competition last weekend (23rd-24th March) along with 34 other students from my school. Leaving school at midday on the 22nd, we cheerfully filled the Doha International Airport and arrived in Dubai at around 2 pm local time. We patiently waited for the coach to arrive and pick us up to go to the hotel. As we arrive, we settled down in our rooms of two, cleaned up for a bit and walked to the Mall of Emirates which took about 10-15 minutes. I insisted in advance that I wouldn’t go shopping but sit in starbucks and prepare for my performance instead. But, just like any sensible ladies would do, my friends and I ran to Forever 21 instead kinda regret it afterwards. Haha.

Oh, just so you know, I did preparations later on :p

23rd of March

This was the first day of the competition. Here’s the Qatar International School in full team! Having to wake up early, we all looked fabulous and brightened up the hotel’s restaurant. A bus from the school we went to, Jumeira College, picked us up a bit late than schedule. Therefore, we were fashionably late. Notice the fact that we weren’t wearing uniforms while other schools did hehe. The competition is divided into two divisions: junior (age 11-14) and seniors (15+).

The school was not bigger than mine but it surely has more facilities and used up more of the spaces of the land which I was jealous of. First thing in the morning, the seniors were called to go to the exam hall to the some essay writings and a challenge consisting of multiple choice questions, while the juniors did debating in different classrooms. The other half of the day was swapped: juniors went to the exam hall while we seniors debated. Later on after we finished that day, we had dinner in the hall while six best debaters from the junior division were called up on stage to do team up with people form different schools and debate a motion. One of whom was a girl from my school who were all so proud of!

Junior debate showcase

This is Bunnie, one of the directors of the program. She is simply legit.

24th of March

The second day of the competition was in a different school called GEMS World Academy. It. Was. Enormous. The school looks like Sea World from the entrance with the blue walls and wavy rooftop. The inside was more like a conference centre with a proper cafeteria, 2 cafes (that I was able to see, idk if they had more), paradox looking stairs, HUGE auditorium and even a PLANETARIUM. They even had Former US president Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as visitors.

The events which happened on day 2 was the scholars’ bowl where the teams of 3 were given clickers and answer the questions that were projected on the big screen in front of the auditorium. Then this time was the seniors’ debate showcase, where the 6 top debaters from the senior division were called up to debate a motion. Later on after we had lunch, we gathered up in the auditorium again to watch the scholars’ show which was basically the talent show where anyone can do anything that they considered as talents. It was great to know that their sound system in the school was working properly unlike in mine x_x

After that was the award ceremony. Haha, I was a bit disappointed I didn’t get anything but then at the end I was surprised by the fact that my team was qualified to the global round, Alhamdulillah. Speechless!

Humungous auditorium

Daniel Berdichevsky, founder of WSC

Some of the many awards that people from my school received! So proud of everyone from Qatar International School and we ALL got qualified to the global round (not everyone did btw!)

The doll is an Alpaca, the mascot of the World Scholars’ Cup

It was truly a breath-taking experience as I had the chance to know new people from different backgrounds and gave me lessons on how to debate better :p Not only people outside of school, but I know people from my school even better and closer!
To end this, I’d like to thank everyone who made my weekend unforgettable and amazing, full of lessons. But a special thank to our coach Ms Fitzpatrick who went head over heels dealing with us silly bunch, phoning travel agents, embassies, staying up late in school, etc. Admit it, it was worth it! We all qualified the regional round and glad to make her proud.

Note:

Pssst, I turned 17 2 weeks ago :p

This was filmed during the Doha Tribecca Film Festival back in October 2011.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my sweet friend Salsabilla and her amazing voice covering Adele’s Someone Like You. Spread the word please, she needs to be heard!

Ever thought of breaking a world record? Well, almost 3 weeks ago, I did! The previous record of the biggest hide and seek game was around 500 people while when it happened in Qatar, there were more than 1000 people. Although the event was badly organised and did not start on time, I was please to be more participated in world events. #lame.

Not much to say about that really. The event was sort of an epic failure, it ended up just like playing the kids’ catcher game with 1 seeker and 1000+ hiders!

I guess what was fun that time was just the fact that I got to hangout with my friends. Ha

…that I have become a recent One Direction fan and got the fever since watching One Thing..

…that I am currently, freely, helping out in a local production house called Mediadante, which has been asked by Qatar TV to produce a show based on fashion. Therefore, I have been and will be very busy but excited at the same time!! I have only attended 3 meetings, everything and everyone have been great to me so far. I’m looking forward to working with more people and contacting local designers, stylists, etc. Cannot wait to start shooting and post pictures! I might as well have my friends involved in the filming, so it would be awkwardly cool to film my own friends :’)

It’s also nice to know there have been new readers dropping by my blog.

Cheers x

(taken by my baby Diana F+)